Final Assembly

Once the servo tray is installed, the hull and deck assembled, and the mast and boom
are done, you're almost finished. One enhancement I made was to drill a hole in a
1/4" nylon bolt and slide it down the sail control line ("sheet") to plug the metal
supporting tube for the crewman. This acts as a fairlead for the line exiting the
tube and may keep some water from coming in. (Sounds good, anyhow!)

At this point you may want to finish painting
your crewman. It'll be a lot harder after he's on board, and he can't be readily
detached again.

I gave him a base coat of yellow spray paint and then used model paints to put on
the details of his face and life preserver. Once he's dry, he's attached to the
pivoting assembly on deck. As the instructions say, you will need to push down
the grommet on the pivot tube to lever his rear end above the deck. You'll have to
glue the grommet in place to keep his weight from moving it back.

I couldn't bear to put a blank hatch over the servos, so I found a clear piece of
plastic. I also attached it with double-sided tape ("carpet tape") instead of a
bead of silicone. I'm not enough of a sailor to know if water will loosen the tape
over time or not.

For a battery, I used a 1650mAH NiMH 5-cell pack I had purchased for another boat.
I picked this capacity because the next size up was a lot more expensive. It does
fine on the other boat, so maybe it'll be good enough here too.

Initial "sea trials" showed the bow to be angled upwards, but a re-examination of
the photos on the Aquataur website show a similar tilt, so maybe this is as intended.

Pat says "The boat will be up in the bow when the crew is sitting in the stern.When
winched out fully the weight moves forward and the boat will become more
level."

A modification

I did notice one problem I felt needed fixing. The sailor's bun scraped across the
rear hatch, regardless of how I adjusted the grommet at the front of his support
assembly. On close inspection I noticed that the rear crosswise support member was
bending under the weight of the sailor.

I fixed this by epoxying a short wooden prop midway under the support. I'm also thinking
of placing a crosswise plank across the boat under the sailor when the boat is in
storage to reduce stress on this piece.

Pat at Aquataur responds:

The weight on the crewman was increased just prior to you receiving your
boat and yes I also found that the plastic rack sunk under his weight and
as you will see from the attached photo, the boat now has a support